It has been a big year at VirtualPBX, and we’d like to share our 2020 Year in Review with you. See how we’re listening to customers and setting VoIP trends that will push the communications industry forward.
Our release of major phone plan features like Video Conferencing and Business SMS have been a long time coming. All our departments have worked hard in 2020 to help business make the most out of their evolving work situations — including the common switch to remote work. Moreover, you can see in all our feature releases this year that we have followed the advice of our customers by making it easier than ever to use VirtualPBX Phone Plans for all business communications.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur just getting started or a multinational enterprise, our developments this year have kept you in mind. Don’t forget to take advantage of our year-end Snap Recordings promotion for 20% off your next audio recordings, and look below for a brief overview of our 2020 collection of feature releases.
Video Conferencing is arguably our most substantial feature release of 2020. The use of video adds another dimension to our phone plans by giving customers the option to complete video calls with their co-workers and stakeholders. Video callers can pair with other video callers, or they can speak to audio-only callers, all by way of select desktop phones and through the VirtualPBX Softphone on desktop and mobile.
Business SMS also adds an important facet to our service, and of all the VoIP trends represented here, it may be the most popular of this holiday season. Now you can use mobile and desktop devices on your VirtualPBX Plans to send and receive texts to your team and to your customers. It’s a great option for remote workers who want to stay connected throughout the work day. It also makes one-to-one customer outreach efforts easier by meeting customers where they spend much of their time: on their mobile devices.
Multiple Auto Attendants is the long-waited extension to our popular Auto Attendants feature. Now your business can assign an automated attendant to any one of its phone numbers. Our Essentials, Advanced, and Enterprise Plans give you five, 10, and 15 phone numbers, respectively, to use with no additional cost. All those numbers can be used as a primary business number, a DID number for individual employees, or a number directed toward a specific group of employees. Multiple Auto Attendants gives all those individuals and groups the opportunity for a custom inbound greeting and custom call routing.
Speaking of upgrades, our ACD Queues Pro feature expands on the ACD Queues system we have long offered with many of our plans. The upgrade to Pro gives businesses more control over their inbound calls. It provides administrators with capabilities like Whisper and Barge, and it allows you to create custom Hold Treatments that present information like position and wait time announcements. We have also expanded the capability of reporting in ACD Queues Pro, allowing you to view reports live and download them for later review.
Dynamic Caller ID helps businesses cater their Caller ID to the phone numbers they call. You can match any outbound dialed number to an area code or local code and present your business phone number that matches the location. Employees can also use their own feature codes to present a related phone number. VoIP trends are driven by features that allow business to better connect with their customers; Dynamic Caller ID helps you establish a local presence to establish a rapport with anyone you call.
DISA (Direct Inward System Access) makes sure you have direct access to your phone system from any phone. You may find yourself in a situation where you can’t make a business call from a VirtualPBX device. With DISA, you simply call your main business number, dial your DISA extension, and enter the customer phone number you want to call. Your call will route through your business phone system and out to the caller. It preserves your caller ID so you can keep your business identity intact.
Our Zapier Integration was released this year to give you better automation capability. We have retained the ability for you to use webhooks to transfer call data from one location to another, but with our Zapier App, it’s even easier to select options like Inbound Call or Voicemail to track those events in other web apps. You can log all your inbound calls to a Google Sheet or notify your team in Slack when a voicemail reaches a company inbox.
Often overlooked as an important feature, the VoIP trend of referral programs can play an integral part in building a community. Our Referral Program was created to help business communications professionals outside our organization help their own followers find a reliable service provider. Now we provide even more incentive to partner with us, starting with a $25 bonus for any referral to our Unlimited Minutes Plans. The monetary bonus increases with the size of the plan purchase, all the way up to $600.
We’ll See You in 2021!
Keep an eye on these VoIP trends and everything else listed on our Product Roadmap that will guide our efforts in the coming year.
We hope to make 2021 as successful as this year. We also hope your business can succeed in the months ahead and conquer any roadblocks in your way.
